We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Statues In The Capitol

In a move one might describe as “adding insult to injury”, or perhaps as “petty and dickish”, the House has graciously decided that the tax-paying-but-unrepresented citizens of the United States who live in the District of Columbia may place one statue in the Capitol’s visitor center, instead of the two that their own constituents receive. So now – assuming it even passes the Senate – we get to choose whether we want Pierre L’Enfant or Frederick Douglass to be placed in the hallowed halls.

You know what? Fuck ’em. We should keep our statues. Put them up in some nice city-owned parks somewhere, preferably in neighborhoods that are in want of some good statuary. I would love to see Frederick Douglass in Civic Plaza in Columbia Heights, and it would be cool to walk by Pierre L’Enfant coming out of the Waterfront Metro station. The one place I don’t want either of them is in the halls of Congress. The mere thought of those slimy, un-American politicians who continue to deny their fellow citizens representation smirking as they walk by the one statue which they have condescended to allow us to give them turns my stomach.

Accepting this compromise is a symbolic acceptance of our indentured status. It is a moral defeat, it is unacceptable, and we should reject it.